The shocking volumes of food being imported into Australia from China rightly has the farming community angry.
The revelations published on FarmOnline last week have brought to the surface long-held frustrations with Australia's pro-free-trade policies.
For decades now, family farmers have expressed anger with the National Farmers' Federation and successive Federal Governments for promoting a free-trade agenda.
They argue that the removal of tariff and subsidy protections have cost farmers their livelihoods, properties and future prospects. It has left our industry competiting on an uneven playing field against producers from the rest of the world.
It is impossible to argue that these have not been the unintended consequences of Australia's quick transition to an open economy, but for some readers to argue that we gain nothing from trading with China, and that protectionist barriers should be put up to stop the flow of Chinese food, is missing the point.
First, Australia needs to trade with China. Some economic forecasters have predicted that within five years the Communist nation will have the largest economy in the world. Thus access to its markets is vital for our future prosperity.
Second, Australia already exports vast quantities of both food and natural resources to China. Without exports of coal and iron ore, the Australian economy would not have enjoyed - until recently - such a golden run.
Third, trade negotiations are a back-scratching exercise. No-one is given anything for nothing, and no country can expect to increase tariffs and subsidies without some form of retaliation.
Thus, fighting back against imports of Chinese food by increasing our import tariffs in order to protect farmers, will undoubtedly have ramifications for Australia's mining exports - we all know that farmers, unfortunately, stand well after miners on the political pecking order at present.
But, that is not to say nothing could and should be done.
The farm sector, as many readers have already pointed out, should be approaching the argument from two angles: food safety, and consumer choice.
On the first point, the time is right, in the wake of the Federal Government's inquiry into quarantine services and the Chinese melamine milk tragedy, to question the adequacy of the testing and screening of food imports into Australia.
Second, product labelling must be improved if consumers, and thus Aussie farmers, are to receive a fair go in the market place.
The processing and retail industry has always argued that this too hard and costly given the myriad of permutations within the food production chain: for example, Australian-made; Australian-grown but overseas processed; Australian-packaged but overseas grown; and contains some Australian and some imported foods.
While there may be some legitimacy to these technical arguments, there is little defence for the size of the small print detailing such information. Nor is there any reason why fresh produce should not contain large, clear signage detailing the country of origin.
These are the areas which farmers should be directing their anger in order to fight Chinese food imports, because lamentably, there's no turning back the clock on our trade agreements.
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